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Friday, April 6, 2012

Slovenia Proves That Simple Is More

This year Slovenia opted for the overly long and dragged out national final format. I didn't watch anything except for the results as they came in. Therefore I have very little to write in this part, the introduction.

Anyone who read our article on early fan favourites this year will remember that Slovenia came out very highly on the scoring. This was not because it slipped through on the back of confusingly simple mathematical models. No, it actually had a great score. So what is it about this seemingly understated song that fans are going crazy for, well let's take a deeper look.

Eva Boto will sing Verjamem in Baku next month [I love being able to say that]. Her song is an anthemic Balkan Ballad, very much of a similar style to what the Balkans were producing around the time Serbia won in 2007. The song has great vocals backing it, both Eva and her backing singers are well suited to the song. Verjamem is wonderfully anthemic and is sung with great passion and purpose. I'm not entirely sure that this will come across fully at Eurovision, but you never know. I love the changing music that backs the song particularly the drums that are constant in the background of the song. What I just love about this song though, is it is simple, but retains your interest, while at the same time it is very accessible.

The performance is pretty much what you would expect from a ballad, the singer stands there and sings with dancers in the back ground. If the national final performance is anything to go by the stage will hopefully remain rather brightly lit, which I like, as it is not this dark moody style of ballad we are used to. The dress of the backing singers is also strangely distracting. I would change it before ESC if I was Slovenia.

The biggest threats for this song is that there are so many Balkan ballads in semi-final 2. There is going to be a couple of surprises coming from this semi-final but I actually think that this could really do well. The simplicity of the song will help to make it more attractive to western music tastes and it will surely do well with juries in general. The song is not helped by being ninth in the running order particularly on account of being just before Croatia. Even though Croatia has a weaker song I think they might steal a couple of votes from Slovenia.

Verdict: I think that Slovenia have a really great song and will build on their success of last year. However their biggest challenge is to get out of the second semi-final and this will be no easy task. On balance I think that they will qualify. Personally I think this is the best Balkan entry this year.